Let’s compare area property taxes

Published July 30, 2012 at 8:00 am

I came across some information on property taxes the other day that readers may find of interest. An organization called Tax-rates.org has compiled all the local taxes by jurisdiction across the nation. In addition, the Office of the Minnesota State Auditor has published the budgets for each county, comparing 2011 to 2012, and that includes how property taxes are expected to change this year from last.

I won’t pass judgment here, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how Stearns and Todd counties compare to the counties surrounding them. The table below does that.

The Median Property Tax means that half of the homes in the county pay higher taxes, and half pay lower.

The median value means half of the homes are worth more and half are worth less than that value.

The National Ranking is where the county ranks among the 3,145 counties in the United States for property taxes as a percentage of median income. This is an indication of the affordability of the property tax bill. The higher the ranking, the lower the percentage of income that goes to property taxes.

Those first three come from Tax-rates.org. The last column comes from the Office of the State Auditor.

Talk to your county commissioner if you like what you see — or even if you don’t.

Tom West is the general manager of the Peach. He can be reached at 320-352-6569 or by e-mail at [email protected]